Not So Looney

This Saturday, my great-niece will celebrate her first birthday. As with most kid's birthday parties these days, it will have a theme based on popular children's characters. Little B's will feature these critters:

They are cute, colorful, cheerful, and they like to sing and dance. Kinda reminds you of a Broadway revue of Sesame Street. I'm sure most parents would agree that the characters are wholesome and educational for their small children to watch. But it seems like all these cartoons eventually just meld into one big kaleidoscope of fluffy, puffy Technicolor animal blobs (i.e. Barney, Doodle bops, Blue's Clues and the like). I love you, you love me, blah-blah-blah. What about when everyone doesn't love everyone?

I looooong for the days when cartoon characters had just that...character. Gone are the days when kids could actually witness real life lessons via their favorite Saturday morning characters, because now the powers that be have deemed these treasures of old as 'too violent'. Ahem, excuse me? Those cartoons weren't violent, they were real, and taught me many, many valuable lessons.

For instance, I learned what really happened when one falls off a cliff. Smack, you hit bottom, and probably break into a thousand pieces just before a large boulder falls on your head. Lesson: Don't fall off a cliff. Simple, isn't it? Nothing on this earth compares to my beloved Looney Tunes. Yes, they got blown up, run over by trains, shot into outer space, and otherwise bludgeoned. But they were intelligent, funny, witty, educational and extremely entertaining. And they more often than not taught us what NOT to do. And one never worried about political correctness when Bugs Bunny was pulling a fast one on Elmer Fudd. Elmer had that one coming.

No, in the real world, cats and dogs don't always get along...but at the end of the cartoon, they still appreciate each other's differences.